Lord Grantham's Revelation
by Edward Carson
Summary: Lord Grantham reviews the whole Pamuk incident and is dismayed.


1 **Lord Grantham's Revelation** ( _c._ 1921)

Lady Grantham had been cozily tucked in for the night by Miss O'Brien and was thinking about whether or not she wanted to read for a few minutes, when Lord Grantham entered the bedroom. Cora smiled at her husband and reached over to pull back the bedcovers on his side, noticing as she did so an absent look on his face. He did not even seem to see O'Brien as she slipped by him, closing the door behind her. His distraction persisted as he shouldered his way out of his robe and draped it absently on the back of a chair before climbing into bed.

"Robert?"

He turned towards her, although the faraway look in his eyes remained.

"Penny for your thoughts," Cora added, snuggling up to him a little in the hopes of penetrating the fog around him.

Had he been capable of focusing clearly on his wife's words, Lord Grantham would promptly have responded that no thought of his was worth as little as a mere penny. But tonight he was concerned with much weightier matters. "I'm sorry, my darling," he said, almost automatically. "What did you say?"

Cora managed not to roll her eyes. "What's troubling you, Robert? You've been quiet and withdrawn all evening. Your mother thinks I've upset you in some way."

"No, no, of course not," he assured her, with slightly more animation, taking her hand as he did so. "It's nothing to do with you."

"Can you tell me?" Cora did not always press her husband in this way but something about the way he looked drew her attention. His face was a little puckered up in that look he got when he was hurt. It was almost like a little boy whose fondest toy had been taken away. She wanted to take him in her arms and soothe his small sorrows.

Robert sat in silence for a moment, staring without seeing across the room, and then he shrugged. "Yes, all right then. I've been thinking about Mary and Mr. Pamuk."

It was almost as if he had poured a bucket of cold water over his wife. Cora pulled away and this time did not attempt to conceal her exasperation. "Robert. That's over and done with. And now that Mary has confided the whole story in Matthew and they are happily married, and Sir Richard has apparently decided not to publish it, what difference does it make?"

Robert might have pointed out that an indiscretion was an indiscretion and time hardly healed it, but having been indiscreet himself, he had managed to rationalize away Mary's fall. "It's not that," he said abruptly, and it wasn't. "It's... Well, I was just thinking tonight of what Carson said."

"Carson said something about Mary and Mr. Pamuk? Tonight?" Now Cora sat upright. _Carson said something_? _About Mary and Mr. Pamuk?_ _Tonight_? She didn't know which one of these shocking strands to pursue.

"No, no," Robert said brusquely. "It's not... I'm just trying to see my way clear on this and something Carson said tonight, a turn of phrase, brought it to mind."

"Oh." Relief swept over her and she deflated at once. "Well, what then, Robert?"

He did not immediately respond and the lines on his face deepened. But finally, he shifted his body so that he could look at Cora directly as he spoke. "I'm trying to figure out how it was that Carlisle got the story at all. From what I understand, on that night, Mary sought out Anna to help her with the..."

"Body," Cora prompted. Robert had a longstanding distaste for unpleasant personal details, especially those involving bodies.

"Yes," he said shortly. "And it was too much for the two of them, so Mary came to fetch you, as well."

"Yes."

"Yes, but where was I?"

"Well, here, darling."

"And I didn't notice?"

"You do sleep soundly."

For a moment he looked sceptical, but then he shook his head and continued. "And you told no one, of course." It wasn't even a question.

"Of course not!" Cora couldn't see where this was taking him.

"And Anna? She must have told Bates." Again it was not a question.

"No," Cora said sharply. "She did not. She and Mr. Bates were not even ...close...at the time, and Anna is the most discreet of servants, as well as devoted to Mary."

"But she could have..."

"No, Robert." Cora was firm on this point.

"But Bates knew," Robert persisted. "His determination to keep the secret that his wife threatened to expose was the reason why he left us so abruptly in the middle of the war."

"Yes," Cora agreed, "but it was his wife who told him. On that visit she made to Downton."

"Well, how did she know?" Robert demanded, sounding more than a little peevish at this point.

Cora was perplexed. Most of the time Robert was deliberately and blissfully oblivious to the details of family interactions. But occasionally he got stuck on something and then, like Isis with one of her rope toys, he would not let it go. "Do you really want to know?" Cora asked with a sigh.

"Yes," he said stolidly.

"Well, Mrs. Bates got the story from a maid who was working for Shrimpy and Susan."

"What? How would she know?"

The problem with questions, Cora thought, was that they only led to more questions. "You are as aware as I am, Robert, that the servants in any house know all the scandals. We frequently talk so openly in front of them, almost as if they're not there."

"And the Flintshires' maid had it from _them_? Had did _they_ get the story?"

"According to your mother..."

"My mother knows about this, too." Again, it was not a question. In this case it was more stunned repetition.

"Yes, because Susan told her. And Susan...," Cora's voice rose, overriding yet another interruption from Robert, "had it from Shrimpy, who was told the story by the Turkish Ambassador." Cora spoke quickly, as if in doing so she could forestall further inquiries, for now they were treading on very delicate ground indeed.

"The Turkish Ambassador knew that my unmarried daughter was entertaining one of his dignitaries in her bedroom," Robert fumed, noting incidentally to himself that it would hardly have been less scandalous had his daughter been married. "And how, exactly, did the Turkish Ambassador _get_ this information?" He was sitting up rigidly now, staring hard at Cora and clearly in one of those moods that would not brook any dissimulation.

Cora sighed once more and also pulled herself upright, staring straight back at him. "Robert, I will tell you, if you insist, but you must promise not to be angry. These indiscretions arise in a specific context and you must allow for..."

"Are we back to Anna again?" Robert interrupted. "We can only be back to Anna, because who..."

"It wasn't Anna," Cora snapped. "Anna is the soul of discretion."

"Then who..."

"It was Edith," Cora said flatly. She would have preferred not to confide this evidence of Edith's flawed character, but Cora was not going to see Anna maligned to protect a jealous daughter.

"Edith." Robert wilted visibly. He closed his eyes and passed a hand over his face and for a moment Cora was hopeful that he'd had enough. But then he took a deep breath and focused on her once more. "Edith," he said again. "I cannot believe that Edith would betray her sister and ...and her family in this way."

"Can't you? Oh, darling." Cora caught up his hand and gripped it tightly. "You remember how they were before the war, Robert, at each other's throats all the time, and Edith always on the losing end. Of course it was very wrong of her, but...not at all out of character."

"But how did she...?"

"She wrote a letter to the Turkish Ambassador. At least, that's what Evelyn Napier told Mary."

"Evelyn Napier knows the whole story, too. But, of course, he brought Pamuk here in the first place."

"He didn't know about it at the time," Cora said. "He picked up the gossip in London, in the same circles that brought it to Shrimpy's ear and..."

"And also to Rosamund's," Robert murmured, remembering that odd note he'd had from his sister, hinting at a lack of purity on Mary's part. He had raised the question with Cora at the time, he recalled now, but had been only too willing to accept her dismissal of it.

Silence reigned for a few moments as Robert digested this information and Cora hoped fervently that he would desist. But no.

"Well, then, who told Edith?" Robert spoke evenly, but his agitation was nevertheless apparent.

Cora frowned, thinking about it. "I believe it was Daisy. The kitchen maid," she added. Robert was not always able to keep the lesser servants straight in his head.

"Daisy the kitchen maid." Robert could not contain his exasperation. "And how did she know?"

Cora winced. "Apparently she glimpsed us moving the body as she came up in the early hours of the morning to begin laying the fires."

"And she went running to Edith with the story?" Robert couldn't see the connection there at all. "I am certain that in those days, at least, Edith did not set eyes on a kitchen maid from one decade to the next."

"No, well, she wouldn't have, of course," Cora agreed hastily, anxious that some part of this story accord with Robert's expectations.

"Then how...?"

"It was O'Brien. She told Edith that there was something troubling the kitchen maid, something about Mary. And Edith took the bait, of course." Cora was prepared to defend Anna's integrity and the kitchen maid's proper adherence to her place, but had no qualms about deflecting some of the blame Edith bore in all this onto O'Brien's shoulders. The bond of loyalty there had worn itself thin.

At this Robert laughed, although there was a bitter note to his amusement. "O'Brien. Of course. How could any of this have transpired without her having a hand in it somehow? So the kitchen maid had confided in her?"

"No, not exactly," Cora said carefully. "It was more that O'Brien noticed Daisy's uneasiness and put two and two together."

"But ... on what basis? How could O'Brien possibly have known there was something amiss?"

At this Cora hesitated. "I'm not quite sure, darling. The picture is a little hazy here. But, after all, someone had to show Mr. Pamuk to Mary's room and..."

"And O'Brien did that?" Robert was shocked.

"It's not likely, is it?" Cora said agreeably. "But she may have been told by the person who did..."

"Thomas," Robert concluded, making his own leap. "He was taking care of the Turk, wasn't he?" A deep sigh escaped him. "What a twisted story. It's like something out of a novel."

"Yes, isn't it?" Cora said calmly. "And a bad one, at that. Let's go to sleep now, Robert. You don't want to trouble your mind any further on this and..."

"But what about Carson?"

"What about Carson?" Cora asked this only in hopes of stalling the whole conversation.

"How did Carson find out?"

"How do you know that Carson knew anything?" As Cora knew exactly what and how, and even when, Carson knew about it all, her question was deliberately disingenuous.

Robert made an impatient gesture. "He told me he knew something. He just didn't tell me exactly what it was."

Cora sighed again. "Well, he heard the rumour from his friend, the valet of the Marquis of Flintshire."

"Shrimpy again," Robert muttered. "I hope I am not so indiscreet about the affairs of others in front of _my_ valet," he said grumpily, knowing full well that he told Bates almost everything, and Carson almost as much as that. His irritation almost distracted him from an additional point. "Wait a minute. When Carson spoke of it to me, albeit without actually telling me what it was about, it was in the context of Bates's wife's threat. I was sounding off about how Bates had let me down, and Carson assured me that Bates had done the noble thing by agreeing to return to that ghastly woman in order to prevent her from _engulfing this family in scandal_. That was how he put it, actually," Robert added as an aside. "So that must mean Carson had also had it from Bates." There was not one aspect of this story so far that Robert did not find aggravating and insulting, and he was determined to find fault with someone. Having been thwarted in his false conclusions about Anna, he was now fixed on finding Bates indiscreet.

"I'm sorry, darling," Cora said gently, "but Carson didn't get his information from Bates. He heard the story of Bates, his wife, and the threat she was making against our family from Mrs. Hughes."

Robert's eyes widened in shock. "Mrs. Hughes. How on earth did all of this come to Mrs. Hughes' ears? Anna?"

" _No_ , Robert. Anna has said nothing to anyone. I doubt she's ever even spoke about it with Bates. You may remember, Robert, that at Bates's trial, Mrs. Hughes was called for the prosecution to testify about the exchange she had heard between Bates and his wife when she came to Downton Abbey that first time."

"Yes," Robert said uncertainly, his brow creased. He could not yet see the connection.

"Well, apparently, Mrs. Hughes let Bates use her sitting room to talk to his wife, and then she eavesdropped on them through a grating in the wall."

"Oh, yes," Robert said, vaguely remembering now Mrs. Hughes's testimony and how she had come to hear those incriminating remarks Bates had made. Abruptly he brought his mind back to the issue at hand. "So Mrs. Bates told Bates, and Mrs. Hughes, overhearing it all, also heard the full story. And then she told Carson."

"Yes."

"And Richard Carlisle? Who broke the story to him?"

"Mary told him. After Bates spent his every last penny trying to buy his wife's silence the _second_ time she came to Downton and she lied to him, Mary felt she had to be honest with Carlisle in the hopes that he would be able to do something about it."

"And he did?"

"Yes. He bought the exclusive rights to the story from Mrs. Bates and then threatened her with a jail term if she breathed a word to anyone else."

"Is that it?"

"Yes, Robert. As far as I know."

At last they seemed to have come to the end of it. Robert righted himself in bed and leaned back against his pillows, pondering what he had learned. Cora slid down under the bedclothes, lying on her side so that she might continue to observe her husband. After several minutes, Cora began to think Robert had indeed been satisfied. She realized she was rather drowsy and wanted to go to sleep.

"Robert? Could you please turn out the light?"

He started, as if she had shaken him from absorbing thoughts. "Yes, of course, my darling." He reached over to the bedside and flicked the switch and they were engulfed in darkness. Relieved, Cora closed her eyes and began to drift away. And then suddenly she was startled wide awake again as once more light flooded the room.

"Robert! What is it?" She raised herself groggily from her pillows.

Robert was sitting bolt upright, staring across the room. "So let me get this straight then," he said in a rather brittle voice. "You, Anna, Daisy the kitchen maid, O'Brien, probably Thomas, Bates, Bates's _wife_ , the Flintshires and _all_ of their servants, my mother, my _sister_ , Edith, Carson, Mrs. Hughes, Evelyn Napier, the Turkish Ambassador, and quite possibly all of London society, as well, of course, as Richard Carlisle, _all_ knew about Mary and Mr. Pamuk."

As this seemed only a summary of what they had just discussed, Cora could only cautiously but honestly confirm it. "Yes, Robert."

Again there was a moment of silence and then... "So I was the last to know about it."

Cora had to think about this. "Well, you and Matthew, darling."

For a long moment, Cora thought Robert might explode with rage, as he did on those occasions when he was hopelessly overwhelmed. But then he sighed heavily and slumped back on his pillows, a defeated man in demeanour as well as reality.

"The only thing worse than the revelation itself, Cora, is knowing that you are so widely regarded as incapable of dealing with the revelation that you are the last to know."

"I know, darling," Cora said comfortingly, patting his arm.

Robert turned the light off again and Cora hoped that he would now be able to put it out of his mind. But as she drifted off to sleep she heard him sigh once more.


End file.
